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Sunday, November 4, 2012

Caldwell keeps spouting his nonsense:

Kirk Caldwell has been filling the
media with complaints that Ben does not give full details of his FAST
proposal and there are “no
engineering drawings.”

"Genius has its limitations, but vanity and stupidity have none."

Let’s cut to the quick.

First, the FAST plan has as its basis Parsons
Brinckerhoff’s 2003 BRT plan and then improves it. The Regional segment, Mililani
and Kapolei areas to Downtown, is virtually the same, but adds the use of freeway
shoulder lanes for BRT buses during the rush hours.

New Chinese made buses with capacity of over 100 seated passengers.

We are getting better as we go along.

PB’s 2003 BRT plan forecast ten percent greater
ridership for BRT than they are currently forecasting for the rail project, and
at a fraction of the cost. PB wrote at the time,

"The predominant sentiment among thousands of participants was that a grade-separated
transit system (the rail) would be unacceptably: intrusive on the visual environment; divisive of communities; and too expensive."

PB’s 2003 plan Regional segment offered the greatest
rush hour timesavings, 25 minutes, while the In-town segment, Downtown to
Waikīkī, offered only 1.3 minutes of time savings. While agreeing with the
Regional segment in 2003, we opposed the In-town segment back then because it
only offered miniscule time savings while resulting in vastly increased traffic
congestion along Ala Moana and Kapi‘olani Boulevards.

The entire Waianae Coast waiting breathlessly for this. What a beautiful

improvement over the disaster we have now.

The only significant engineering required for the
FAST plan is that for the 2.2 mile Nimitz flyover from the Nimitz Interchange
to Hilo Hattie. However, the Hawai‘i Department of Transportation has already planned
it and it has an approved Final Environmental Impact Statement. It is also
fully described, with drawings, in the 2003 Final EIS for the BRT.

What other engineering drawings does Caldwell want? Engineering
drawings of a bus?